Sunday, April 29, 2018 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
View more of the Sun's opinion section
With its proposal to drastically raise rents for the poorest Americans living in federally subsidized housing, the Trump administration has sunk to yet another depth of cruelty.
Touted by the administration as a reform that would incentivize low-income families to become more self-sufficient and work their way out of subsidized housing, the proposed change is actually likely to further disadvantage the working poor and drive more of them into homelessness.
It’s an attack on those at the bottom of the economic ladder, and it will create collateral damage that will harm Americans of all income levels unless Congress heads it off.
The proposal, called the Make Affordable Housing Work Act, would increase rent to 35 percent from 30 percent of household income while eliminating all deductions that could lower that figure — such as deductions for expenditures on medical or child care. The result would triple the rent for the poorest recipients of Section 8 vouchers, to $150 a month from the current $50 a month.
For many Americans, an extra $100 wouldn’t be a backbreaker. But considering that the national average income for public housing residents is $12,000, that $100 is a crushing increase.
In announcing the proposal, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson portrayed it as a way to streamline the rules for calculating housing subsidies and eliminate “perverse consequences, like discouraging these residents from earning more income.”
In that statement lies perhaps the most insidious aspect of the initiative. It feeds a destructive stereotype of people who receive subsidized housing as lazy parasites who would rather do anything but get a job and contribute to their communities.
Carson has promoted that misperception before, having said during a 2016 speech at Yale that government shouldn’t provide “a hammock” for the poor.
Try telling a mother who’s supporting herself and her children by working two minimum-wage jobs that the apartment she rents with the help of federal subsidies is a hammock.
No, it’s a lifeboat. And for the Trump administration to threaten to make it unaffordable is reprehensible. Considering that the proposed rules would apply to 712,000 families, the scale of the damage would be immense.
The situation should be of serious concern to Americans, and not just out of compassion for the families who would be forced onto the streets. An increase in homelessness creates community-wide effects, including increases in crime, poverty, hunger and the expenses associated with contending with those and other social problems.
Worse yet, the proposal comes at a time when homelessness is surging in some regions — it was up 9 percent nationally last year, according to one widely cited estimate — and affordable housing is growing more scarce in many cities.
Meanwhile, House Republicans recently advanced a proposal to strengthen work requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps, as part of the 2018 Farm Bill. That proposal, which would apply to as many as 7 million adults, would require recipients under 60 to work at least part-time or enroll in state-run job training programs.
Yes, the same administration and party that provided the massive tax break that disproportionately benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans is tightening the screws on the poorest, most vulnerable Americans.
The good news here is that the housing proposal faces trouble in Congress. Democrats will fight it, and there’s abundant speculation that Republicans will also shy away from it in order not to be seen as heartless by voters in this fall’s midterm election.
But to be on the safe side, and to help protect those in the greatest need, we’d urge Nevada residents to tell their congressional delegates not to embrace this assault on the poor.
